Chapter Text
schedule
/ˈʃɛdjuːl,ˈskɛdjuːl/
noun
1.
a plan for carrying out a process or procedure, giving lists of intended events and times.
“we have drawn up an engineering schedule"
Jude Duarte awoke on her royally gigantic bed. Just as she had for every night in the five years since her official coronation as High Queen of Elfhame. No one has yet to transform into another snake, nor has anyone bothered to wage any consequential wars so everyday has become essentially the same. (There have been battles but only small squabbles in the Seelie and Unseelie Court, none that warranted Jude saddling her toad and marching into the frontlines herself.) And because of these monotonous days, Jude became quite the expert in recognising what was expected of her since receiving her title. To adhere to these expectations, Jude Duarte created The Schedule.
She staunchly followed this rigid routine and it always begins with opening her eyes to the odd tapestry Cardan had purchased during one of their visits to Maine. At first, The Schedule did not begin with this horrid woven art but Cardan persuaded her enough that she caved in, writing in a new addition to her plan. Now that it did begin with the peculiar depiction of a black snake wrapped around a long sword with a background of tie-dye (a small tribute to how Jude had beheaded snake-Cardan—part of his twisted humour), Jude made herself count each individual scale that was splashed with glitter.
There are a hundred and eighty seven.
It takes Jude precisely three seconds to spot each one, it would really take only two but Jude allowed herself to drag the words in her mind. Just long enough that once she was finished, three seconds allowed to each glittery scale, Cardan would begin to stir exactly four seconds after. There did not seem to be any contributing variable that causes him to wake earlier or later. Jude suspected it was his own body’s reaction once his unconscious sleeping self realises Jude no longer joined him in dream state.
Cardan prided himself on being unpredictable and to an extent, Jude’s husband was impossible to divine. But Jude found she could always depend on him to wake as per The Schedule every morning. Just as he did this sundown. First, with twisting his body away from her before facing her once more, angling his body just right so his face would be buried in the crook of Jude’s neck. Though usually his face would find itself right between the crest of Jude’s breasts. He would then murmur a groggy comment entirely of sexual nature. To this, Jude would push him away and begin her day.
“If I lick you here, would you promise to stay?”
Jude pushed her husband away, sitting up before swinging her legs to the cool marble floor. There was a great gown already laid out the prior day, the last part of The Schedule. Just as she did every day before, Jude thanked her yesterday self before taking a quick bath, dressing herself swiftly after.
Throughout this productive series of action, Cardan remained languorously laying on the bed, now with his head propped up by his elbows. He looked like a teenage girls in those early 2000’s films. She wondered what he would say to that. Whether his face would slowly bloom with mirth as he envisioned himself a part of one of those movies. Or if he would throw a pillow at her, glaring and mumbling his complaints and the manner in which Jude joked. She never had the chance to find out, already six minutes behind. She would have to skip the five minute arguments she always had when passing by a member of the Living Council. For that other minute… she’d have to rush through breakfast while also reading the stack of letters no doubt awaiting her at her office desk.
“You work too much!” Cardan called after her as she shut the heavy oakwood doors behind her.
Jude would see her husband later when they received their daily audience of foreign ambassadors or inquiring peasants. Now though, she needed to catch up on her various correspondences.
The too long train of her dress slowed Jude. She should have chosen the tunic and pants, it would have been much more practical than this bejewelled piece but Cardan had persuaded her she would look absolutely enchanting in it. He’d made another comment about Jude looking beautiful with everything or absolutely nothing too but by then Jude had already fallen asleep. So this morning she would have to suffer the consequences; already she was six minutes late from the lacing of the complex corset. She felt precious milliseconds wasting away with the extra effort put into each step.
Today’s breakfast was a plate of bland scones with cream already smeared onto it. The cream part was extremely thoughtful of the cooks. (read as: Jude was glad last year’s two hour long lecture about how her left hand would be occupied with flipping parchment and would not be able to smother her pastries with whipped cream was well received. And perhaps the following seven minute yelling session about how they’d completely ruined her schedule for the rest of the day and a few days after it was taken note of too. The crumbs the scones left were detestable though Jude did not think she could put away some extra time for another scolding. Perhaps she would have to delegate the importance of non-crumbly pastries to Cardan, it seems like the sort of topic he would enjoy discussing.
As it has been for every day before, the letters were extremely dull. The sheer enough already chipping away at Jude’s patience. Then its boring content chipped away at Jude’s soul. Her breakfast was mediocre besides the crumbs it left and besides the occasional stupidly naive requests her subjects and alliances made (each warranting an awkward surprised laugh at its foolishness), there was nothing worthwhile to tell Cardan about during the brief eight minute interval as they walked towards the throne room. Where a hundred faeries would already await, eager to present a gift or receive a boon or something or the other. (Jude stopped taking note, it was always Cardan who ooh-ed and ahh-ed.)
“Let the first one join us!”
If everyone adhered to the twenty minutes allowed to each party, then Jude and Cardan would only entertain nine groups before their next meal which they would share. Cardan managed to evict a promise from her that they would alternate who would choose the day’s dish. Today, it was his turn and he was eager to show Jude his new concoction, she saw him already unsettled in his seat though lunch would not be for another three hours.
“Might I comment on the beauty of your gown, Your Majesty?” the faerie asked humbly. “You look absolutely enchanting with its fabric hanging so proudly on your smooth shoulders.”
Jude felt the insistent prodding of an elbow’s sharp jabs. She pushed his arm away, nodding to acknowledge how this comment was the very same he had made just last night before they’d both fallen asleep wrapped in each other’s arms. But there was not much else remarkable of the faerie. He grandly held a blob of stone, its edges raw in the way that suggested he had found it like that, deep within some mine. The faerie uttered some nonsense how its beauty reminded him of his High King and Queen’s greatness and bowed his head, clearly expecting something in return. Cardan, pleased with how he’d greeted them, had awarded the faerie with a small boon; for stones to never be stuck in the ridges of his soles. (Cardan commented how he noticed the odd way in which the faerie seemed to walk. The faerie admitted to having uneven legs and from expression alone Jude suspected he was offended by the boon but accepted it nonetheless.)
The next faerie was not faerie after all. Instead, she was a human girl, only a couple years older than twenty. Though perhaps that was a lie, time here did not age mortals as they should be aged. Even Jude still maintained the youthful gleam of her teens though there were a few telltales of tiredness like the shadows beneath her eyes.
“Look, Jude!” Cardan exclaimed, in the excited manner he always wore on the occasion a rare human did walk through the Palace doors. Some took offence to this too (they seem to take Cardan’s excitement as snide remarks though he was truly enthusiastic every single time). “Tell us, Miss, what brings you here?”
The human crossed her arms and Jude realised the knights at the door had neglected to seize the rather large sword sheathed at her side. Cardan either did not notice this or was too occupied by his wonder because he gestured for the human to come closer. Jude made a mental note to chastise the sentries posted at the Palace gates, the ones at the throne room doors and the ones throughout the many hallways this human no doubt passed through. Did they think the human was no real threat?
It seemed sometimes the Folk forget that humans were not fragile porcelain pieces. This was especially outrageous as their own High Queen, a human, was perhaps one of or the most powerful and dangerous individual in the whole of Elfhame. Her mind reeling from the sheer disbelief, already beginning to draft the scathing lecture she would deliver, Jude realised Cardan was no longer seated on his throne. He was no longer beside her, instead off the dais and on the lower ground, just small paces away from the human. Jude realised she still had yet to introduce herself. Neither Jude nor Cardan knew her name.
“You are interesting,” Cardan murmured, though his voice sounded off. As if he were enchanted, an impossible feat considering his great power. Before Jude could really warn him off though, just as she leaped off the cushioned seat and flung herself down the dais steps and towards the High King, the nameless mortal pulled out a long sharpened iron stick and plunged it deep into Cardan’s chest. Jude this in a too-slow motion, time halting just enough for her mind to comprehend this, for her brain to note how it seemed to have been aimed just on his heart.
Cardan’s expression did not really shift from its smile though, his eyes only dimming slightly as his lips curved into a small ‘O’.
“Guards!”
The human did not step back, only letting go off the metal piece and pushing Cardan off his feet. She turned to Jude, her glare accusatory as if she was the one who had stabbed this nameless human’s dear beloved husband. “Why did you marry him? After all that his kind has done? How dare you!” The demanding questions never cease, even as the knights grabbed ahold of her arms and hoisted her off her feet. Her voice trailed off as she was carried away, leaving the bloody outcome of her casual cruelty still sprawled on the floor.
“Get a physician, carry the High King away.”
Anxiously, she glanced up at the clock, there was still two hours something until the audience would cease. She could not afford to check up on Cardan, not that she could do much either. So she returned to her throne and gestured for the next party of faeries to enter. They casted a quick glance at Cardan’s empty throne, then the puddle of scarlet with wildflowers blooming around it. Fortunately, no one commented on that though Jude would not object to the spilling of more blood. She was in a particularly murderous mood.
The lunch after did nothing to improve it. Servants tiptoe around her, skittering away once her deadly glare was lowered onto any one of them. Alone at her seat, without the company of Cardan’s boisterous laughter or smug comments on the meat he’d chosen, Jude found herself curving within herself. The last time she’d truly felt this lonely was when Cardan had turned into a snake. This did not seem as irreversible as that affair and she chose to disregard the physician insisting that the iron did pierce a bit of his heart. Enough to promise death. Jude waved off the doctor and resumed consuming her peculiar-tasting meat. Once he’d awakened, she would chastise him on his poor choice.
She was on schedule without Cardan begging her to dawdle here with him a while longer. Jude told herself she was glad for it, grateful that she may return to her waiting stack of letters before she’d have to entertain the final wave of subjects for the day. But was it true? Did she truly find gratitude that some human whose name she was yet to be informed of enchanted Cardan through methods she was not familiar with and proceeded to stab him with a long piece of iron. One that should have been confiscated by the knights at the gates. Or the ones at the hallways. Or the ones posted right outside the throne room. She should have been stopped by the guards nearest to her, posted right below the dais.
Jude should have stopped her.
Her quill pressed the parchment too hard when signing her name, tearing the paper. It would not matter, this letter to confirm Elfhame’s regulation of vase specifications was trivial anyway. She wished she could joke about it to Cardan but he was not yet here, refusing to wake even after many hours since he had first fallen unconscious. She could almost envision him now, laid in their room’s bed, chest wrapped with linen. But Jude did not like imagining these things because her thoughts swiftly drew her towards another more horrifying scene. One with a iron piece sticking out of his chest, grazing his heart. His dearly designed jerkin and its brocade already colouring red from his blood.
“Your Majesty, you have nine more parties awaiting your presence. Or should we send them away?” Jude turned towards the quivering servant. She saw the gleam of sweat on his forehead and the tremble in his lower lip. “Am I behind schedule once more? Eliminate one of them and say that I am to come in ten more minutes.”
With the addition of twenty extra minutes, breathing room before her next task, Jude wondered if she should pay Cardan a visit. If she should visit her husband and witness his condition with her own eyes. But that would be unfair to the faeries who had journeyed far and The Schedule she created all those years ago was a concrete thing she could not go against. Even if she had those extra precious minutes, she knew she would not adhere to the rest of today’s tasks if she returned to her room to check up on Cardan.
So within the ten minutes she promised the servant, Jude Duarte was already seated on her throne, addressing the next faerie eager to kiss her ringed hand and pester her with a thousand maybe sincere compliments.
The first one asked for a prettier chicken, Jude told her this was a palace not a market.
The second requested Jude stopped putting her hair up in horns as it was simply jarring to look at. Jude made the guards tie him up and braid his hair up in horns replicating her own, evicting an oath from him that he would not personally undo or let anything else undo the hairstyle until a week and a day.
The third, fourth and fifth gave Jude vases, to which Jude made a mental note to rewrite her regulations on the vases. It seems it is not such a trivial issue after all.
The sixth refused to speak with Jude as she was not Cardan. That hurt more that she’d like but Jude waved the faerie off dismissively. She refused to display any sort of weakness.
The seventh presented Jude with a goblet that holds ten times more wine than a goblet its size usually would. It was obviously meant for Cardan, both Jude and the faerie knew but neither acknowledged it and Jude sent for the goblet to be put on her bedside table. (Actually, she whispered to the servant to place it on Cardan’s side in case it entices him enough to wake.)
The eighth and last simply wanted to rant to his High Queen. Jude was grateful when the same servant returned with news though she was quickly dismayed to hear her plan did not work. At the further souring of her already very very dire mood, Jude asked the faerie to leave. When he refused, she ordered a nearby knight to unsheathe her sword and give it to her. Jude chopped off the faerie’s tongue, the severity of his punishment was unwarranted, especially since his only crime was offending the already tired High Queen. But Cardan was not there to prevent these ‘needless bloodshed’ as he so often put it. The faerie’s dismembered tongue plopped on the carpeted floor, right in the small specks of blood. Jude left it there, letting it match its larger counterpart. Though Cardan’s puddle now better resembled a small garden.
When Jude returned to her room, choosing which tunic she would wear tomorrow, no voice protested. No one insisted she choose a fabulous gown with large skirts instead. So she set the pants and shirt on the chair and settled onto the bed beside her wounded husband. Jude turned away from him, refusing to acknowledge the white linens still wrapped around his chest and the blood already bleeding through the absorbent fabric.